James Watt was born in Greenock in 1736. Watt had little formal education due to poor health in his youth, but pottering about in his father’s shop he developed an interest in trying to make things ‘work like clockwork’.In his late teens he went to London to learn to be a ‘mathematical and philoso-phical instrument […]

Isaac Newton (1641-1727) was born very premature and not expected to survive. It was said he could be fitted into a quart pot. His father had died three months earlier. When Isaac was three, his mother married a wealthy elderly clergyman from the next village, and went to live there, leaving Isaac behind with his

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (September 14, 1849 – February 27, 1936) was a Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1904 for research pertaining to the digestive system. Pavlov was widely-known for first describing the phenomenon now known as conditioning in his experiments with dogs.Pavlov was investigating the gastric

Hippocrates (460 B.C.-380 B.C.) made such an impression on medical history that his name is still very much associated with medicine today. All newly qualified doctors take what is called the ‘Hippocratic Oath’ and some see Hippocrates as the father of modern medicine even though he did most of his work some 430 years before

Dr. Hargovind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 at Raipur, Punjab (now in Pakistan).He obtained his M.Sc. Honours in Organic Chemistry from the Punjab University in 1945 and later received his Ph. D. from the University of Liverpool in England.The most fruitful and creative decade of Dr. Khorana’s career began in 1960 when he

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) was born in Hamburg, Germany. His father was a prominent lawyer and legislator. In his youth Heinrich enjoyed building instruments in the family workshop.Hertz began his college studies at the University of Munich. After a short time he transferred to the University of Berlin, where he received his Doctor of Philosophy

Humphry Davy was born on December 17, 1778 in Penzance, Cornwall, England. He received his education in Penzance and in Truro. His father died in 1794, and Davy, in an effort to help support his family, became an apprentice to a surgeon.Davy’s most important investigations were devoted to electrochemistry. Following Galvani’s experiments and the discovery

Hugo Marie de Vries born on 16 February 1848 a Dutch biologist, was one of three men who in 1900 rediscovered Gregor Mendel’s work on genetics. De Vries was educated at the Universities of Leiden, Heidelberg and Wruzburg. He became a professor of botany at the University of Amsterdam in 1878.De Vries conducted a series

Guglielmo Marconi was born at Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874. He was educated privately at Bologna, Florence and Leghorn. Even as a boy he took a keen interest in physical and electrical science and studied the works of Maxwell, Hertz, Righi, Lodge and others. In 1895 he began laboratory experiments at his father’s country

Mendel was born on July 20, 1822 to a German-speaking family of Heinzendorf, Moravia, Austrian Empire (now in Czech Republic). During his childhood Mendel worked as a gardener, and as a young man attended the Philosophical Institute in Olomouc. In 1843 he entered the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno. Born Johann Mendel, he

Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa, Italy. Galileo pioneered ‘experimental scientific method’ and was the first to use a refracting telescope to make important astronomical discoveries.In 1609 Galileo learned of the invention of the telescope in Holland. From the barest description he constructed a vastly superior model. Galileo made a series

Euclid is one of the most influential and best read mathematician of all time. His prize work, Elements, was the textbook of elementary geometry and logic up to the early twentieth century. For his work in the field, he is known as the father of geometry and is considered one of the great Greek mathematicians.Very

Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a family of seven sons and five daughters.Ernest received his early education in Government schools and at the age of 16 entered Nelson Collegiate School. In 1889 he was awarded a University scholarship and he proceeded

This Italian mathematician and physicist, born at Faenza on 15 October, 1608.Torricelli was educated at the Jesuit college of Faenza, where he showed such great aptitude for the sciences that his uncle sent him to Rome in 1626 for the purpose of study. There he fell in with Castelli, the favourite pupil of Galileo, who

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome on 29th September, 1901, the son of Alberto Fermi. He attended a local grammar school, and his early aptitude for mathematics and physics was recognized and encouraged by his father’s colleagues. In 1918, he won a fellowship of the ScuolaNormale Superiore of Pisa. He spent four years at the